The Kingdom of the Gods – N.K. Jemisin

Note: This book is the third book in a trilogy so while I will avoid spoilers for this particularly book, there will inevitably be allusions to the events of the previous two.

A century has passed since the events of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, nearly as much since those of The Broken Kingdoms, and the world is changing again. The power of the Arameri, the family that once ruled the entire world, is diminished—its wealth and power being challenged and its members being killed under suspicious circumstances. But there is an even more fundamental happening: Sieh, firstborn of the godlings, god whose portfolio is most perfectly encapsulated by childhood, is losing his powers. More specifically, he is growing up.

No longer able to reside in the realm of the gods, Sieh is forced to live among mortals, relying on their friendship (and, frequently, grudging charity), including from the Arameri heir Shahad, her twin brother Dekarta, and the youngest of the godlings, Ahad. These people have limited patience for Sieh’s growing pains, though, particularly because he has, at one point or another, managed to offend each of them. Nevertheless, as Sieh discovers nearly too late, they and the world are in grave danger because there is a hidden foe of Sieh’s creation (and antithetical to his nature) that is looking to recreate existence.

The Kingdom of the Gods follows the pattern set by the two earlier books to good effect, dropping into an unfamiliar and disorienting situation right along with the protagonist—Sieh, in this instance. The first person narration once again provides novel insight into the world and moves the plot along well, but also contributes to its jumpiness since one of the plot points is Sieh’s erratic aging. The conclusion to the series also picks up where the previous two books leave off in terms of addressing issues of abuses of power inherent in, for instance, rape, but also manipulations within friendship. The result is a book that provides a thoughtful discussion of friendship and moves along well, but comes cross as somewhat less tightly constructed than the two previous installments, both of which operated on tighter deadlines in the narrative.

On the whole I liked The Kingdom of the Gods as it continued particularly to explore the cosmological setting established back in the first book. Jemisin’s take on these was a logical extension of what had already been established such that elements such as how godlings interacted with things antithetical to their nature and how they discovered what their nature actually is were refreshing. At the same time, though, there was a tendency to err towards making things too neat. This works for the story in the sense that it makes things easier to explain, but it nevertheless left me frustrated because it seemed to diminish the world of depth.

I had other complaints, but I don’t want to nitpick too much. Endings are hard and I did not feel cheated the way I sometimes have with how a series ends. Jemisin does well not making the trilogy continuous so much as consecutive, picking three stories from a long period of time and letting the world breathe between each book. Each sequel is recognizably in the same world and dealing in somewhat different ways with the same themes, but not simply picking up where the last left off. The result is that the gods are the characters who are largely carried over from one book to the next, but this does not mean that they remain constant either. In sum, I am looking forward to reading Jemisin’s other work and have a copy of The Fifth Season on my to-read shelves that I will probably open later this year.

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Next up, I am currently reading Tom Wolfe’s Back to Blood. This is my first exposure to Wolfe’s work and only now in the home-stretch am I actually appreciating the plot—the rest of the book strikes me as literary self-indulgence of ego and lust.

About

Welcome to my blog. Although the host is new, the blog is not--the first post went up in January 2008.
I write about a variety of topics here including, but hardly limited to, baking, books, movies, historical topics, and politics. This is a catchall for a range of topics, particularly those that are not part of my research portfolio.